South African choreographer and arts activist, PJ Sabbagha named the 2026 JOMBA! LEGACY ARTIST

The 28th annual JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience, hosted by UKZN’s Centre for Creative Arts, has announced that it will honour South African choreographer and arts activist PJ Sabbagha as the 2026 JOMBA! Legacy Artist.

PJ Sabbagha, whose name has become synonymous with issue-based dance theatre, is the founding member and Managing and Artistic Director of The Forgotten Angle Theatre Collaborative (FATC - now in its 31st year), the Ebhudlweni Arts Center (in its 11th year) and the annual My Body My Space Rural Public Arts Festival (in its 11th year).

Awards And Recognition

Sabbagha was the recipient of the 2005 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance and the 2006 FNB Dance Umbrella award for Best Choreography for his work, Still Here. He was also awarded the 2005 and 2009 awards for Most Outstanding presentation of a new work for The Double Room and Macbeth respectively.

In 2005 he was voted top South African Artist and was also placed in the top 10 of The Star Tonight’s annual top 100 South Africans.

International Engagement And Artistic Reach

He has travelled across the USA as a guest of the US State Department as part of the 2007 International Visitors Leadership Program investigating HIV and AIDS and other communicable diseases.

In 2017 Sabbagha visited France as a guest of the French Ministry of Culture and Communications as part of a Seminar Focusing Arts and Culture in Service of Community and Territorial Development.

Sabbagha’s choreographic work has been shown at festivals and theatres in countries that include Russia, Mexico, France, Holland, Tanzania, Mali, Mozambique and Taiwan.

Currently PJ leads FATC in its delivery and work as appointed implementing agency on behalf of the Mpumalanga Provincial Department of Culture, Sports and Recreation’s Community Arts Center Support and Development Programme funded by the National Department of Sports, Arts and Culture.

JOMBA! Legacy Artist Recognition

JOMBA!’s artist director, Dr Lliane Loots says, “Deeply significant to the JOMBA! Legacy award is PJ’s lifelong commitment to not just his choreographic excellence, but a deep-seated care for community and his pioneering work that has shifted South African dance out of urban spaces. His curation and vision have shifted our dance landscape and we are deeply humbled that we get to honour PJ in this way”.

“The JOMBA! festival’s 2026 overall curatorial theme and provocation is Choreographies of Activism: Moving Bodies as Disruptive Presenting and we can think of no other South African artist who has exemplified this moving across physical, economic and access borders in his dance work, whether this has been training and teaching, choreography, or curation”.

Opening Performance At JOMBA! 2026

PJ and FATC will open JOMBA! on 25 and 26 August in Durban with a re-visit and re-boot of an earlier work NOAH - a multi-media dance work exploring the notions of loss, love and letting go.

It uses the frame of irreversible climate change as an immersion in the moment of crisis, from which there is no return.

NOAH will be performed by Nicholas Aphane, Athena Mazarakis and Shawn Mothupi, and is a layered conversation between live performing bodies, video projection and shadows that surfaces the personal and collective response to this (personal and geopolitical) moment of crisis.

Festival Dates And Information

JOMBA! takes place at The Sneddon Theatre in Durban from 25 August to 6 September, and the satellite festival takes place at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg from 9 to 12 September 2026.

For more information go to https://jomba.ukzn.ac.za/